2010/11 Australia trip - Atherton Tablelands |
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We backtracked up the Goldsborough Valley and took the narrow and winding Gilles Highway up to the Atherton 
Tablelands, a thousand feet above the coast. The area is lush and green, almost as luminous as the hills in New Zealand. It’s home to many little parks protecting lakes and waterfalls and mountains.
We stopped at Lake Barrine, one of the Crater Lakes, formed by volcanic action about ten thousand years ago. Around the lake were beautiful gardens, with sun birds and butterflies, and a couple of 
kauri trees, relatives of the New Zealand kauris, but not as stocky and massive. In the midst of our walk the rain returned and we had to seek shelter in the teahouse, and fortify ourselves with Devon teas.
We moved on to nearby Lake Eacham. This lake was more of a family swimming park, very 
busy on a Saturday afternoon. We took the hike around the lake, a rain forest walk in the dry for a 
change.
There are so many waterfalls in the area that you can spend all day traveling along the waterfall circuit, but we opted for one of the biggest, Millaa Millaa Falls. I thought it looked a little too perfect; straight out of the atrium of a resort hotel.
We drove back down towards the coast, noting the sky tubes across the road; these are tubes of rope spanning the road and giving possums and gliders a safe way of crossing the roads.
On the coast around Innisfail we were driving through sugar and banana plantations looking for a campground with a laundry, to deal with our increasing pile of wet smelly clothes. We ended up right on the beach at Kurrimine in a campground run by the local shire council. The manager said that the rain had finished off the year’s sugar crop as it had lost its sweetness.
As we were on the beach again, Sandie asked him about crocs, and he said they were in the creek next to us, but only ventured into the sea when they were looking for a mate and that wouldn’t be for a month or so. He told us a story about a friend who’d been fishing in the creek and chose to cast between two logs lying in the shallows and one of them got up and chased him back to the campground. He packed up and left and has never returned. Crocs are very touchy in the breeding season.
We could see a full moon across the water and could feel a brisk breeze through the Troopie, damp and cool.
Sunday October 24th
The rain returned as we were leaving but at least we’d had a few hours of dry windy weather to dry our stuff out.